5-6 Days in Barcelona soon - Please Help Me with My Itinerary!

You should look up stuff on you tube to see if it is something worth your time seeing and not go by completely what is in a guide book. for example look up Sardana dance on youtube and watch if it is something you have to see also. You can't do everything. Look stuff up to see if actually fits your interests and subtract or add

I'm looking forward to my first visit to Barcelona next fall. My only thought here is that Saturday #3, the HOHO bus, might not be a good idea on your first day after a transatlantic flight. Riding around is a good way to fall asleep (as every parent of an infant knows). If you're arriving from elsewhere in Europe and jet lag isn't an issue, then go for it!

You can walk to most places in Barcelona, don't need the HoHo bus. If you do, one day is enough.

We took a tour of Barcelona from Barcelona Day Tours that included the Gaudi sites like Park Guell, Sagrada Familia and more.

You can do Montserrat on your own, just take the early train from Plaza Espania.

Unless you've flown overnight to Europe before and know you come out of the experience in good shape, I think your arrival-day plans are seriously over-optimistic, but as long as you're walking around outdoors, you aren't wasting money on pre-purchased tickets to things you may not have any interest in when the time comes.

The Ramblas is a big nothing unless your focus is on trying to spot the pickpockets, You'll probably find yourself on it from time to time, which is fine. But I urge you not to waste any of your precious time in Barcelona making a special effort to take a ramble along the Ramblas. Rick's advice on this point is way out of date.

Since you especially like Picasso, I think it's important that you pre-purchase a ticket for the first time-slot some morning. (You should in any case buy a ticket in advance, else you may be in an extremely long ticket line and come away empty-handed.) You will not believe how crowded the place can be, and it's pretty much the whole thing except the room(s) with ceramics. Most popular art museums are OK except for mobs in front of a few very famous objects. That was not remotely my experience at the Picasso Museum, and I was there three years ago. It was very difficult to get close enough to the wall to read the title and date of a painting. Visitor levels in Barcelona have gotten heavier since then, so I assume it is now much harder to get lucky with the conditions inside the Picasso Museum. Allow more time than you think you will need, because the crowding will slow you down.

I don't recommend the hop-on/hop-off bus. I saw an unbelievable line of people waiting for the bus at Placa Catalunya. Maybe 200 folks, clearly more than would fit on one bus, and there was no bus on the scene. It looked like a very inefficient way to move around the city. Public transportation is excellent. You can buy a T10 ticket, good for 10 rides, for about 10 euros. Also, it's great to explore Barcelona on foot with an eye in your map, which will probably flag a lot of modernista buildings. I used the 1-euro map sold by the tourist office.

Just don't take the Metro to Parc Guell unless you're up for a long, mostly uphill, walk. But you no longer need to use public transportation to get there, because the ticket includes a shuttle bus. I assume this new information is on the Parc Guell website. This is another ticket you must buy in advance.

All of these are timed tickets. Making a trip to Barcelona is like putting together a jugsaw puzzle. It's essential to take full advantage of your mornings by scheduling one of the sights requiring advance-purchase of tickets as your first activity, when you don't have to worry about when you'll finish up at the preceding sight. I would not start my days (except the arrival day) with a self-guided walk, because those can be done at any time.

There's no place I paid to enter that took me less than 90 minutes once I was inside, and some took longer. Be aware that at the most popular sights, they seem to meter people in and out (limits on visitor count due to fire regulations??), so holding a ticket for 10 AM doesn't guarantee you'll get through the door at that time--though I didn't get held up significantly anywhere. Just don't schedule yourself too tightly. Most of the ticket are quite expensive, so you'll want to have time to fully enjoy each place.

I don't know whether you'll be able to see all of the Palau de la Musica Catalana with a concert ticket. Perhaps the stained glass will not be as pretty at night? But I think it's a point worth considering, since eliminating the tour would free up about an hour of your time, including travel time to get there. Both the tour and the concert need to be pre-booked. I assume you'll want an English tour. I think it is now possible to do a self-tour (perhaps only in the AM?), so that may be an option if you can't snag a spot on an English tour.

Out of space...

La Sagrada Familia is a buy-in-advance ticket. I liked having the first time-slot because I walked into a virtually empty church, but if you want to ascend a tower (walking 770 steps back down), I understand that your tower time-slot is always 15 minutes after your church-entry time, so you wouldn't have much time to appreciate the relatively empty church before you needed to line up for the tower.

The last time I checked, the Barcelona Cathedral was free in the AM and charged an entry fee in the afternoon. That may have changed. There is a dress code. I was fine, so I don't know the details, but I'm guessing you need to have covered shoulders and knees. They made me take off my sun hat. (I'm female.)

I have not been to Tossa de Mar, but Cadaques is a charming, white-washed former fishing village dripping with bougainvillea. It is also very touristy, and it takes a good while to get there from Barcelona. You can get as far as Figueres by train, then it's a very picturesque bus ride to the coast. One wrinkle is that the fastest trains from Barcelona to Figueres (AVEs) go to the Figueres Vilafant station, not the regular Figueres station. The bus station is right near the regular Figueres station, so you'd either need to take a slower (and cheaper) train from Barcelona to Figueres station, or you'd probably want to catch the shuttle bus (which I assume goes near the Figueres station, but I haven't checked) or grab a taxi from Figueres Vilafant.

Edited to add: The shuttle bus from Figueres Vilafant does go all the way to the Figueres station, rignt near the bus station. Walking between the two stations would be quite a trek--over 30 minutes for sure.

If you decide to take an AVE anywhere, there's the potential to save considerable money by buying a non-refundable, non-changeable ticket well in advance. Montserrat doesn't have AVE service, so you just buy that ticket at the Placa d'Espanya Station.

It's possible Tossa de Mar is quicker to reach from Barcelona than Cadaques. I don't think it can possibly be prettier than Cadaques, and I doubt that it is less touristy, but that's speculation on my part.

The Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya is quite good and is on Montjuic. In addition to paintings and sculpture it has lovely, very early, frescoes rescued from churches in the Pyrenees and an intersting modernisme collection (furniture, decorative arts, jewelry).

Your schedule is unusual in that it doesn't look crazily over-packed, so I'll mention a couple of places where you probably would not need to pre-purchase tickets:

• The Sant Pau modernista site, which is fairly near La Sagrada Familia and was designed by the same architect responsible for the Palau de la Musica Catalana. It has multiple buildings and nice grounds. I liked it a lot. It takes time to see it all.

• Casa Vicens, an early Gaudi site recently refurbished and opened to the public. It's probably not in the guidebooks yet. I haven't seen it myself.

Casa Mila (La Pedrera) and Casa Batllo both require pre-purchase of tickets, in general. I don't know whether nighttime visits are any easier to arrange, and I haven't seen either one at night, so I can't give you an opinion about the La Pedrera concert other than saying I would not be remotely interested in any nighttime activity on my arrival day.

Casa Batllo has some major renovations going on, so if I were going to choose one of the two houses at the moment, it would be La Pedrera. It was also just a smidgen less overcrowded than Casa Batllo in 2016, but if people are bailing on Casa Batllo because of the renovations, that could have some impact at La Pedrera, unless its visitation levels were already maxed-out at the time of my visit.

Thank you all so much for these great and detailed thoughts. I knew you could help me out!

Now what I'm thinking is:

SATURDAY AFTERNOON & EVENING:
1. Barri Gotic Walk & Barcelona Cathedral
2. Palace of Catalan Music (free after 3, last tour at 3:30p)
These may be flip flopped, depending on timing and energy.

SUNDAY:
1. Picasso Museum
2. El Born Walk
3. La Padrera or Casa Batillo (or both?!) in early evening or at night.

MONDAY
1. Sagrada Familia
2. Eixample Walk
If extra time, Sant Pau Modernista Site or Casa Vicens
3. Park Guell in early evening
4. Concert at Palace of Catalan Music at 9pm
(Maybe this day is too busy? Can't figure out how to move things to other days, because I'm trying not to zigzag all over the city if I don't have to.)

TUESDAY:
1. Day trip to Tossa de Mar or Cadaques (still can't decide)

WEDNESDAY:
1. Explore markets in the morning? La Boqueira?
2. Montjuic & Barceloneta
3. Magic Fountains at night

THURSDAY:
1. Montserrat? Worth the journey?
2. Whatever else I feel like doing!

FRIDAY:
Enjoying my last morning in Barcelona!

Jigsaw puzzle is right indeed!! Moltes gracies!

You have to buy Palau De la Musica tickets in advance, so last minute decisions on your itinerary is not an option.

Check the time of the Magic Fountain. It starts after sunset, so there's no reason to plan it for the same day as Montjuic. What are you going to Barceloneta to see/do?

I hope you enjoy your visit Barcelona is one of my very favorite cities.

Popping in to second @acraven's suggestion of ditching the Ramblas Walk. We found it very crowded, over-touristy, and anti-climactic. But Sagrada Familia is all everyone says it is, and more! I'd also like to add that Barcelona has very cheap and plentiful taxis that are barely more than using the Metro.

About the Palau de la Música Catalana tickets.

At the advice of a resident of Barcelona, I already bought my ticket and have it printed out for this event: Terra Endins Havaneres. You don't say exactly when you'll be in Barcelona, but the good seats (a subjective thing) sell out fast. If you want to experience a performance in the art nouveau building, make sure that what you want to see is in the Concert Hall and not the smaller, Petit Palau.

I've been reading many posts about Barcelona, and I am amazed about how crowded it has become and about the need to pre-purchase tickets. We were there in October 2010, and we did not pre-purchase tickets for anything. At the time, there were no timed entries for Parc Guell. We just walked right in. The only place we had a long line to buy tickets was Sagrada Familia. We were there by 9AM and probably had to wait in line for about 30 minutes. We walked right into Casa Battlo and Casa Mila. I am so glad we visited in 2010!!

We have never used a HOHO bus, including in Barcelona. We stayed in Eixample, and it was very easy to walk to most places. We did walk from Sagrada Familia to Parc Guell, which I would not recommend, because as acraven states, it was a long, tiring uphill walk to get into the park. I remember we took a taxi back to our hotel.

We visited both Tossa de Mar and Cadaques, and they are both beautiful!! We had a rental car. I think it would be difficult and time consuming to get to Cadaques by public transportation.

To the OP, I recommend seeing both Casa Battlo and Casa Mila (La Pedrera) if you have the time. They are both worth seeing, and if I remember correctly, they are close to each other so makes it easy to see both.

Your Monday on the revised itinerary still looks overly full. Most people take more than a day to recover from jet lag. Personally speaking, I found Monserrat underwhelming. I think you should seriously consider eliminating it and allotting more time to the other places.

Does anyone have thoughts on a day-trip to Tossa de Mar v. Sitges? I know Sitges is closer, and maybe easier to get to using public transportation? Any thoughts?